Seeing signs for places like Cwmrhydyceirw is one of the things that makes journeys to Wales that little bit more special. Also seeing ambulances on the A4067 with the legend “AMBIWLANS” emblazoned on the front. The dipthong “iw” or “uw” takes some mastering, but once you've got it, you're set up for doing impressions of Max Boyce or Tom Jones for life. You'll never want to go back to the old way of pronouncing “you”. I'm surprised that Catherine Zeta-Jones shook off her West Glamorgan accent quite so readily. If I were a veloptuous Hollywood starlet (and I'm hoping that there's still time) I'd take enormous pleasure in turning up to swanky Calafornian cocktail parties and loudly shriek in sing song tones “ooooh! Look at 'im! He looks exACTly like ARnold SchwARZenegger!”

This has reminded me of the Welsh language text book belonging to my friend Deirdre, which on page 48 or so, has the page heading

CHAPTER 7: LOSING YOUR JOB.

*

So. Boxing Day, the traditional hoovering up of everything that's left over from the day before. Sprouts and spuds get mashed up and fried a la bubble and squeak. There is no better accompaniment to this than salad cream, and I was dispatched to the Co-op in the adjoining village to fetch some. On the way out of the supermarket there was a note affixed to the door, saying “Missing from December 24th: A white Shetland pony from our back garden. Please call with information.” A missing pony is certainly not the same thing as a missing cat. Ponies don't wander out of their own accord and get mown down on the road to Ystradgynlais by a speeding Volvo. Similarly, if you heard a scratching on your back door on Xmas day and opened it to reveal a white Shetland pony, your kids wouldn't look at you with big eyes and say “Oh, a pony! Can we keep him? Let's call him Jesus!” You'd ring a mate and say “Huw, don't suppose your pony has gone AWOL?” So I think someone nicked it. Heartless. I expected more of my Welsh cousins. (I'm not saying my actual cousins did it. You know what I mean.)

This evening was spent poring over an dusty atlas pulled from a bookshelf, dating from the mid to late 1940s, and comparing political maps to those of the present day. Germany had swallowed up Polish towns like Wroclaw, although the mapmakers did have the decency to put a dotted line around the “disputed” territory and mark it “Under Polish Occupation”. Persia and East Prussia were still visible. Israel wasn't. I wondered to myself if patriotic American textbook manufacturers have produced two-coloured maps of the world – blue for all us freedom loving countries, and a sickly yellow for all those freedom hating countries.

Then I pondered the fact that George Michael has written two songs called “Freedom”, one recorded with Wham! and a completely different one solo. Dear sir, is this some kind of record?